ile I just naturally sit back and size up this Solid
American Citizen, with a whale of a lot of satisfaction.

"'Our Ideal Citizen--I picture him first and foremost as being busier
than a bird-dog, not wasting a lot of good time in day-dreaming or going
to sassiety teas or kicking about things that are none of his business,
but putting the zip into some store or profession or art. At night he
lights up a good cigar, and climbs into the little old 'bus, and maybe
cusses the carburetor, and shoots out home. He mows the lawn, or sneaks
in some practice putting, and then he's ready for dinner. After dinner
he tells the kiddies a story, or takes the family to the movies, or
plays a few fists of bridge, or reads the evening paper, and a
chapter or two of some good lively Western novel if he has a taste for
literature, and maybe the folks next-door drop in and they sit and visit
about their friends and the topics of the day. Then he goes happily to
bed, his conscience clear, having contributed his mite to the prosperity
of the city and to his own bank-account.

"'In politics and religion this Sane Citizen is the canniest man on
earth; and in the arts he invariably has a natural taste which makes him
pick out the best, every time. In no country in the world will you find
so many reproductions of the Old Masters and of well-known paintings on
parlor walls as in these United States. No country has anything like our
number of phonographs, with not only dance records and comic but also
the best operas, such as Verdi, rendered by the world's highest-paid
singers.

"'In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby
bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America
the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any
other decent business man; and I, for one, am only too glad that the man
who has the rare skill to season his message with interesting reading
matter and who shows both purpose and pep in handling his literary wares
has a chance to drag down his fifty thousand bucks a year, to mingle
with the biggest executives on terms of perfect equality, and to show
as big a house and as swell a car as any Captain of Industry! But, mind
you, it's the appreciation of the Regular Guy who I have been depicting
which has made this possible, and you got to hand as much credit to him
as to the authors themselves.

"'Finally, but most important, our Standardized Citizen, even if he